1. Client Background

Client was a mid-sized aftermarket automotive parts producer. They went through a period of explosive growth, but were a little underdeveloped in their production planning yielding a lot of excess inventory.

2. The Challenge

The client was buried in component level finished goods. They wanted to build it out into sellable level kits, but their MRP system was not sophisticated enough to tell them what kits they could make based on that inventory.

3. The Approach

We first partnered with the individuals that were already trying to figure out how to use that inventory, but were manually doing it. They were only able to do a few per day because of how many places they had to pull information and do math by hand.

4. The Solution

Using a few exports from their MRP system, we built a system that could provide them multiple levels of information:

• What kits they could complete with all parts present.

• What kits they could complete by building a single missing part from that kit.

• Because they could relate this to open orders, they knew what orders they could fill with the kits or if there were no open orders for the kits they could produce, aka excess material.

5. The Results

Using this, paired with another inventory tracker that we built for them, we saw a 33% reduction in CFG inventory. This helped them build out the usable material, then E&O the material that was sitting for a long time, even up to a couple years!

6. Key Takeaways / Lessons Learned

Understanding what the client is looking for is always the priority, but understanding how they currently handle or work around whatever they want to improve is critical. Making the solution something that they can quickly understand and use is what makes the big difference with our custom solutions vs. forcing a semi-solution with a pre-built application.